An Internet cookie is a protocol header consisting of a string of characters (cookie content) that is inserted by a web server, operated by an Internet Content Provider (ICP), into the random access memory (RAM) on a user's computer (client) while the user is operating a browser (application program) to access web pages on the Internet, typically through an Internet Service Provider (ISP) using the World Wide Web (type of network operating system). An ICP may also be an ISP, as in the case of, for example, American On Line.
A web server may "set" a cookie at various points during a user's access of the web server. The string of characters or content comprising a cookie specifies a domain, path, lifetime and value of a variable. The variable may be, for example, the number of times the user has visited the web server or particular web pages provided by the web server, and the domain and path indicate a website (a group of similar web pages operated by a single entity). If the lifetime of the cookie is greater than the time the user spends at the website, then the cookie may be saved in a cookie file (file of cookies) for future reference by either the user, the web server setting the cookie or other web servers.
Cookies are set for many different reasons, including enabling a web server or an ICP to customize the information it provides to a user, to facilitate on-line sales or services (e.g., implementing a so-called "shopping basket"), for tracking web pages the user has visited, or for providing the web server or ICP's website with some demographic information (presumably only geographical information or at what time a user tends to visit the ICT's website).
The idea behind the use of protocol headers such as cookies is to enable a web server or ICP to gather information about a user. By setting one or more long-lived cookies in a user's cookie file, the next time the user accesses the website, the ICP can know certain information about the user that will, in theory, facilitate the user's productive use of the information accessible at the ICP's website. This works because when an ISP directs a user to a website, the browser on the user's computer examines its cookie file for cookies that have been set by the website and provides those cookies to the website by way of introducing itself (representing the user) to the website. The website may then, or sometime later, set new cookies on the users computer, or alter the value of cookies previously set there.
Cookies are also used to securely store personal data a user has shared with a website. As mentioned above, cookies et by an ICP in the RAM of a user's computer end up stored in a file on the user's hard drive if the lifetime of cookie is longer than the time the user spends at the ICP's website. All such cookies are stored in a single file on the user's hard drive (a file usually called "cookies.txt").
More browsers today, including Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer, can be configured to display to a user a warning that a cookie is about to be set, and to give the user the option of blocking the cookie. The user is often even able to view the content of the cookies. However, the user often has no knowledge of the meaning of the content of the cookie nor the intended use for the cookie contents by the ICP. In some cases, when a user blocks an ICP from setting a cookie, the ICP's website refuses to allow access to the website by the user. Since there are many innocuous and quite useful reasons for a website to set a cookie, it is probably not, as a general rule, in the user's best interest to simply block all cookies.
In addition to configurable software for disabling a website from setting a cookie in the first place, the prior art includes a number of applications intended to assist a user in removing the file of long-lived cookies (the cookie file). Both the cookie-blocking browsers and cookie file managers indicate to a user the identity of the website responsible for each cookie intended to be set or stored in the cookie file. Identifying the website that set a cookie is easy because, as indicated above, each cookie includes, as text, the path and domain for the website that set the cookie. The prior art also includes software that will enable a user to remove sensitive information from the user's browser cache and cookie files.
What the prior art does not provide is a means by which a user can, using the same mechanism for exchanging information about who the user is, convey to a website preferences the user may wish to convey, instead of only preferences the website has deemed useful to know. For example, a user may wish to communicate to a website that the user would prefer to receive any advertising, demonstration material or other kinds of literature as postal mail or through a courier service.
What stands in the way of communicating such preferences is that the ICP website that set a cookie sometimes does not have variables (type of cookie) that are appropriate for what the user wants to express. What is needed is a means by which a user can not only identify and delete a cookie file or delete particular cookies within a cookie file or still in RAM, only guessing what the cookies content conveys, but a means of actually interpreting the content of the cookies within a cookie file or still in RAM, and also a means by which a user can create new types of cookies (cookies with new variables) that may be offered to a website of an ICP.